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The Cresset, a journal of commentary on literature, the arts, and public affairs, explores ideas and trends in contemporary culture from a perspective grounded in the Lutheran tradition of scholarship, freedom, and faith while informed by the wisdom of the broader Christian community.

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In 1870, French
author Jules Verne published 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the story of
the mysterious Captain Nemo and his crew who pilot a technologically amazing
submarine named the Nautilus to the farthest reaches of the ocean. The
novel is narrated by French marine biologist Professor Pierre Aronnax, who,
along with two companions, is saved from drowning by Captain Nemo and then
accompanies him on his fantastic journeys throughout the rest of the novel.

20,000
Leagues Under the Sea is often described as one of the first works of science
fiction. Verne’s novel is filled with technological wonders as well as with
speculation about where that technology could lead. From the very first chapter,
the story makes it clear that this is a tale that hangs on the border between
fact and fantasy. As Aronnax describes the general reaction to sightings of the
Nautilus (thought to be a giant sea creature), he writes, “seeing that
the human mind is always hankering after something to marvel at, the stir
created throughout the world by this supernatural apparition will be well
understood. As for relegating it to the realm of fable, that was out of the
question” (2). In two sentences, Verne both describes the Nautilus as
supernatural and dismisses the possibility that it is fable, an apt description
of works of science fiction, which exist on the border between the possible and
the impossible.

This
reading of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as science fiction is further
supported by later authors of science fiction who point to Verne’s novel as a
key influence on them. Nemo appears directly in works such as Alan Moore and
Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentleman; the novel is
alluded to in films like The Neverending Story and Back to the Future
Part III; and authors like H. G. Wells were inspired by Verne’s work
in creating their own speculations about technology and humanity. In his
preface to Seven Famous Novels (a collection of his classic works),
Wells writes, “InThe First
Men in the MoonI tried an
improvement on Jules Verne’s shot, in order to look at mankind from a
distance.” As these examples show, the imaginative ideas and attitude toward
technology found in Verne’s work helped to lay the foundation for the
development of science fiction as a genre.

And
now, there is yet another novel that is indebted to Verne’s work: Andy Weir’s
self‑published 2011 novel The Martian. Weir’s novel (which will
be released as a movie in October 2015) tells the story of Mark Watney, an
American astronaut who accidentally gets left on Mars by the rest of his team
and has to push the limits of his creativity, using whatever resources he has
in order to survive. (Note: spoilers about the novel follow.)

Watney
is part of the third manned mission to Mars; his expertise is in botany which
would be useful in conducting experiments on growing plants in zero-gravity and
on the surface of Mars. Six days into the mission, a dust storm threatens to
tip over the ascent vehicle that would return the crew to their ship, Hermes.
The team decides to depart from the surface before that can happen, and in the
chaos of getting to the ascent vehicle Watney falls over and is knocked
unconscious. In the fall, the biometric computer on his spacesuit is destroyed,
making it appear as if he were dead, and so the rest of the crew makes the
agonizing decision to leave his body behind, rather than risk all of their
lives going back into the storm for him. Watney is then forced to rely on a
temporary inflatable habitat (nicknamed “the Hab”) to keep him alive as he
works to stretch his resources, find a way to communicate with Earth, and
ultimately, survive long enough to find a way home.

In
terms of simple storytelling, there are some very basic similarities between
Weir’s novel and Verne’s classic tale. Both novels are works that speculate
about the possibility of traveling to unexplored places using technology that
is only on the verge of being viable. As Stephen Baxter notes in his introduction
to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, submarine technology was very new at
the end of the nineteenth century; several experimental craft had been created,
including one by the Confederacy during the American Civil War, but submarines
were by no means common. Similarly, the ion engines used to power Hermes,
the ship used to take Watney and his crew to Mars in The Martian, are a
technology that does exist, but so far have been used by NASA only with
unmanned spacecraft such as Deep Space 1 and Dawn, both of which
explored small objects such as asteroids, comets, and protoplanets.

Weir
and Verne show similar attention to detail throughout their novels as well. So
much of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea simply catalogues the undersea
wonders that Aronnax observes, including lists of aquatic plants, types of
whales, and shellfish. The description of the Nautilus is conducted with
similar precision, both in terms of the physical dimensions of the ship as well
as how quickly it can travel through the water. Readers learn that the Nautilus
is seventy meters in length, with a first hull that weighs 294.96 metric tons
and a second hull that weighs 62 metric tons (90–91). We learn where its parts
were made, how it is powered, and what kind of pressure it can withstand. Together,
these details provide a very comprehensive picture of the entire undersea
adventure.

While
Weir does not provide lists of Martian flora and fauna in his novel the way
Verne does (obviously), he still provides meticulous technical details to
support the plausibility of his tale. Near the end of Watney’s journal entry
for Sol 14 for instance, he works through calculations for how much soil he
will need to grow the potatoes that will keep him alive. He notes that the
“total floor space of the Hab is about 92 square meters… It’ll be a lot of
work, but I’m going to need to cover the entire floor to a depth of 10
centimeters. That means I’ll have to transport 9.2 cubic meters of Martian soil
into the Hab.” This inclusion of figures and mathematical calculations
throughout the narrative functions very similarly to the details in Verne’s
novel; it suggests to the reader that this adventure could actually have taken
place.

But
perhaps the most intriguing similarity between these two works is the parallel
between the central figures of each novel, Commander Nemo and Mark Watney,
respectively. Captain Nemo’s name means “nobody” or “no man” in Latin, as
Aronnax’s servant Conseil points out in Chapter 20. Throughout the novel,
Aronnax continues to emphasize how mysterious Nemo is: “Would I ever know the
nationality of this strange man who boasted that he belonged to no nation? Who
or what had provoked his hatred against humanity?... Was he one of those
frustrated scientists—one of those geniuses whose work had been spurned…?”
(99). These questions persist until the very end of the novel. After Aronnax
escapes the maelstrom into which Nemo sends his vessel, he is left with
questions, not just what happened to the Nautilus and Captain Nemo, but
even after the thousands of miles traveled, simply who Captain Nemo truly was. A
later work by Verne, entitled The Mysterious Island, provides more
information about who Nemo is, but the lasting legacy of Nemo is as the enigma
at the center of an amazing undersea voyage.

Mark
Watney is similarly enigmatic. Although we do know his real name, we learn
surprisingly little about him over the course of the novel. This is most
apparent in what we learn about the personal items brought along by the crew. Every
crew member who was part of Watney’s Mars mission brought with them from Earth
a personal data drive containing reading material, music, movies, and the like.
In many ways, these data drives serve as metonyms—as stand-ins—for the absent
crew members. As Watney looks on each of his colleagues’ data drives in search
of material to stave off boredom, we learn bits about them. Commander Lewis
brought disco music and 1970s television shows like Three’s Company,
Johanssen brought mystery novels and Beatles’ albums, and Beck brought medical
journals. Even Martinez, who didn’t bring a data drive, brought pictures of his
children and a crucifix. But we never learn anything about what Watney himself
brought. His own personal data drive is conspicuously absent.

As
a result, even though we gather token bits of information about Watney,
including that he is from Chicago and he majored in botany, in many ways he
remains as much of a mystery as Nemo does. We learn that he has parents, but
who doesn’t? Other crew members talk about their families in greater detail,
mentioning spouses and even children. With Watney, we don’t know anything; even
at the end of the novel, we only see Watney reuniting with the crew of Hermes.
There is no joyful reunion with his family and friends back on Earth.Like
his data drive, the specifics of Watney’s personal life are simply not there.

And
yet, in spite of both men being enigmas, our interpretation of this mystery is
strongly affected by the different narrative perspectives of the two novels. Both
novels are narrated in the first person, but it is Professor Aronnax who
narrates 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, not Captain Nemo, while Watney is
the narrator of his own tale. Because we arereading Watney’s journal,
his thoughts are literally an open book. And the thoughts he conveys have
personality. He uses parenthetical asides and questions to his imagined reader
to imbue his journal with a sense of sarcasm and humor. As a result, Watney
begins to feel familiar to the reader of The Martian; we learn his
voice, his fears, his dreams. Even though the title of Weir’s novel—The
Martian—associates Watney with the otherness of “little green men,” the
truth is that the first-person narration of the novel aligns the reader with
Watney, while Nemo remains an inscrutable cipher.

This
difference in narrative perspective ultimately has a significant impact on the
overall impression each novel creates about humanity as a whole. In Verne’s 20,000
Leagues Under the Sea, the tale of Captain Nemo is about someone who has
“broken with humanity” (67), someone who is positioned in opposition to the
reader and the rest of the world. It is a novel about a world in which groups
of people strive against each other, a world where the strong oppress the weak.
Nemo makes this clear time and time again in his rejection of inhabited land:
“I am the oppressed, and there is the oppressor!” (408). Nemo’s alienation
emphasizes the consequences of inequality and social injustice, but the mystery
surrounding his character also makes it much more difficult to empathize with
him, thus reinforcing the great divide between us and him.

In
The Martian,because the first-person narration aligns the reader
with Watney, Weir’s novel sends a much different message about humanity. The
lack of personal information about Watney becomes not a mystery that divides,
but a place in the narrative into which we as readers can insert ourselves,
bringing us closer to the struggles of the central character, rather than
pushing us further away. As a result, Watney’s words of unity at the end of the
novel are words in which we see ourselves. When he asks why everyone worked so
hard to rescue him, he speculates that it is because of what he stands for:
“progress, science, and the interplanetary future we’ve dreamed of for
centuries.” Then he continues, “But really, they did it because every human
being has a basic instinct to help each other out.” These are words that the
reader can feel a part of, not only because Watney uses the word “we,” but
because our reading of the novel makes us active participants in his rescue,
part of a larger endeavor of all humanity.

While
there is no denying that Verne’s novel remains a classic work of science
fiction, maybe it is Weir’s view of humanity that is even more needed today, at
the beginning of the twenty-first century. Works of science fiction like The
Martian remind us of what brings us together, showing us how we as a
species can work together to fix problems, be they technological or social,
ever pushing past the limits of what seems impossible to what lies beyond.

Jennifer Millerteaches English at Norman­dale Community College in
Minneapolis, Minnesota.